Boutique Design - January/February 2011 - 40

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American Original
Jordan Mozer and Associates wove together the genius of more than 60 artisanal companies to create the custom interiors of the Renaissance New York Hotel 57.
Jordan Mozer

The Club’s Frankie and Johnny wing chairs were hand-cast by Jordan Mozer Studio.

BY MARY SCovIAk, EdItoR At LARgE

ordan Mozer sums up his firm’s design solution for the Renaissance New York Hotel 57 in two words: “American couture.” While that sounds like designer speak, it’s actually a pretty straightforward description of a program in which nearly every element of the hotel’s FF&E was custom-made or customized. Working with the production staff at Jordan Mozer Studio LLC, local craftspeople and artists and a handful of repurposed Rust Belt factories, the team at Chicago-based Jordan Mozer and Associates Ltd. (JMA) fast-tracked one-of-a-kind prototypes for furnishings, finishes and accents into a made-to-measure look for Marriott International’s 200-room boutique

hotel on East 57th Street. Mozer’s ability to take a hotel program full of original pieces from concept to installation in a matter of months is the payoff for best practices refined over more than 25 years. He’s never been a fan of what he calls “catalog parts.” “We like to invent the look of studio furnishings for each project,” he says. to do that while still staying within the tight time frames and tighter budgets most clients require, Mozer not only built out his own industrial design skill set with a second degree in architecture, but expanded the firm’s business platform with a service menu that includes construction management, industrial design, sculpture and architecture. He

Boutique Design | January+February 2011

Doug Snower Photography, Chicago (Hotel 57); Eliza Mozer (Jordan Mozer)

and Jeff Carloss, partner with JMA, also launched Jordan Mozer Studio to produce custom products. “the one-stop shop was key to assuring that the design work would be seamless,” says Mozer. Armed with that kind of control over the supply line, as well as long-standing relationships with outside sources, Mozer and Carloss begin their process. “We think of our projects as non-linear, three-dimensional storytelling,” says Mozer. “We start with a collection of narrative ideas which, in turn, generate the forms, materials and images that will be consistent throughout the property.” Fortunately, the building that would transition from the independent Hotel 57 to the Renaissance New York Hotel 57 had a great tale to tell. Built as the Carriage House in 1875, it was later owned by East Side fashion designer Morris Blum. He sold it in 1923 to developers who asked architect Arthur Loomis to incorporate the original structure into a new hotel for fashionable women, the Allerton House. Mozer and Carloss wanted to capture the handcrafted quality of Loomis’ architectural elements as well as the vertical influ-

Boutique Design - January/February 2011

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